This Twitter thread comes from Katy Hayward of Queen's University Belfast. I thought it worth sharing. It looks like a reliable guide to me, if simplified a little.
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It’s important to remember that protecting the Good Friday Agreement covers more than just the border.
Last summer EU and the carried out a mapping exercise to identify all areas of North South co-operation which rely on our joint membership of the Single Market. They found 142. One example was cross border health which needs a single standard for medical devices, the approval of medicines at EU level, mutual recognition of qualifications etc.
It’s more than just goods passing through a border. North South co-operation and an all Ireland economy are also important parts of the Good Friday Agreement and implicit in all of this is that we maintain the status quo. This means staying in the single market.
This was covered by an RTE journalist here last November.
https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2017/1117/920981-long-read-brexit/
Thanks
If this was all considered and well articulated before referendum, if people truly realised what an enormous headache it is (not just the NI/ ROI border but the EU/GB generally) then it is quite distinctly possible, if not likely, that Brexit would never have passed the vote.
Come to think of it, the unfolding logistical nightmare may well set the case for a 2nd referendum where it is practicality rather than ‘politics’ that sets the agenda.
Of course they would.
People are desperately unhappy. Their lives are horrible & they wish they were less so but don’t know where to turn.
look at the howls of rage that Gideon harnessed. “There are people surviving that don’t go out to work. They live off benefits”. Now, I wouldn’t claim everything about my job is lovely, but I like most of the people I work with & I find it, for the most part, quite intellectually stimulating. Obviously, I wish I were a novelist, or painter, or composed concertos, but in truth I lack talent.
Getting up, putting on a suit, shirt & tie (yes I’m v old school) & going to work doesn’t seem to me so bad that I begrudge others the miserable pittance that we call benefits. The only reason I can think that people can begrudge it so greatly is that they hate their jobs, their offices & the people they work with. They are dreadfully unhappy.
Likewise, the only reason I can imagine for the uncharitable, unchristian &, in all too many cases, frankly inhuman, comments made about refugees & asylum seekers is that people in this country are living rancidly awful lives. Sadly, we’ve lived right down to Jon Cooper Clark’s Chicken Town & we don’t know how to climb back out.
Katy has been doing excellent work for years and I often use it on Progressive Pulse
Lots of her work on the LSE Brexit blog and Slugger O’Toole
Seán Danaher says:
“Katy has been doing excellent work for years and I often use it on Progressive Pulse
Lots of her work on the LSE Brexit blog and Slugger O’Toole”
Keep telling it in words, Sean.
Some people love charts and stuff, but I hate them. I don’t think I’m alone in this respect.
If you can find someone who can express it as music that would be good too.
Ta-Da!
There you go! 🙂
Andy,
How about one of those Charles Ives pieces where he had two different orchestral forces playing entirely different and contrasting themes simultaneously? Both blasting away completely regardless of what the other lot are playing. Perfect musical metaphor!
And occasionally it works….
But we can’t afford that risk as an economy
Even Terry Riley ‘In C’ had rules
Great programme on it on BBC 4 on Friday, by the way. The result can then be intoxicating
But it makes the point, we need rules and frameworks
Could it have been considerations raised by Ms Hayward that inspired our Foreign Secretary to offer us his border analogies?
Phil says:
“Could it have been considerations raised by Ms Hayward that inspired our Foreign Secretary to offer us his border analogies?”
If that isn’t a purely rhetorical question, I’d say the answer is….’pretty unlikely’.
My advice to May and her bunch of fellow clowns is that they had better read Katy’s input above. It’s the closest to an actual plan I’ve seen yet to be honest.
The deficit on the balance of trade current account has deteriorated considerably since 2010; that is since the party of business has been in control of things.
We are now asked to believe that leaving the EU will halt this deterioration.
May’s proposals seem to revolve around the continuation of EU membership via a “by analogy” mechanism of Byzantine complexity at a time when the civil service has been weakened by years of austerity.
Also the ony way that May and the Brexiteers can succeed is by proving that a country is better off outside of the EU than within it and so she has to persuade the EU to engineers its own demise.
Thank you Katy Hayward for the logic you have applied to the border issues. I am always astounded at the way in which journalists can pontificate on this subject without any reference to technical assessments.
It’s not a plan. It’s an elucidation of choices. A plan would include information on putting them into effect and an assessment of risks and of how they will be mitigated. All that is detailed work that hasn’t been done. Meanwhile, the impact assessments have been kept from the public.
The hope of the Brexiteers is for the UK to leave without a deal before people truly understand the actual consequences (which they will blame on the EU) and demand a reversal. What they achieve may be the breakup of the UK and the end of the Conservative party.
Paul says:
“It’s not a plan. …” on the duck principle it doesn’t quack, waddle, doesn’t look like one, doesn’t lay eggs or have webbed feet or show any propensity to go near water. I share your suspicions as to its taxonomy.
“What they achieve may be the breakup of the UK and the end of the Conservative party.”
I’m confident I’m not the only person who actively hopes for that. To an outside observer it must look like the unstated aim.
Customs barriers are important, but regulatory barriers are just as important. While trade within the EU is “free”, it is still not entirely frictionless. The question is not whether we can trade with the EU, to sell and buy goods and services, but how much extra friction will be involved.
Theresa needs to speak to the Swiss to understand how well (or not) their pick-and-mix association with the EU works. The EU is fed up with the plethora of bilateral sectoral agreements and has said there can be no more until the framework is aligned more closely to the EEA.
Incidentally, Switzerland contributes to the EU budget, and is in Schengen.
The inexorable logic of Barnier’s staircase diagram leads us to a “Canada plus” deal. But the UK is about 2,500 miles closer to the EU.
A fine article on the border by someone who walked it.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/05/irish-border-brexiters-good-friday-agreement
Well worth a few minutes.
I agree
Have tweeted it